Linkages between school facility condition and learning have long been used to justify investments in new green construction programs, but the implications of these conclusions for students in existing school building stock is just as important. The outlook for America’s aging building stock is not optimistic. The American Society of Civil Engineers in 2005 rated America’s schools facilities a paltry “D” in its Report Card for America’s Infrastructure[1]. In late 2009, a coalition of school, health and science organizations released “Sick Schools”, a report that offers “compelling evidence of how polluted air inside and outside schools escalate health care costs, increase absenteeism, and reduce test scores.”[2]

The numbers are compelling. More than 55 million children spend their days in more than 130,000 school buildings in the United States.[3] Studies have shown that students attending schools in poor condition score 11 percent lower on standardized tests than students who attend schools in good condition.

According to William “Bill” Orr, Executive Director of the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), a national green schools group based in San Francisco, it’s a parity issue. “When we talk about green schools, we shouldn’t just be talking about the lucky few that get to attend a newly constructed high performance school,” he said.

Assessment and Recognition Program for Existing Schools
With funding from the California Energy Commission, CHPS has spearheaded the development of an online benchmarking, assessment and improvement tool called the “Operations Report Card” (ORC).  This new program allows both high- and low-performance schools to benchmark their current performance and receive suggestions for improvement in five categories: energy efficiency, thermal comfort, visual comfort, acoustics, and indoor air quality.  The ORC combines facilities data, system and classroom measurements and occupant surveys to generate report card scores and recommended improvements.  Schools are scored on a 100-point scale in the five primary categories. According to Orr, this is “the first time anyone has quantified indoor air quality, lighting, thermal comfort, and acoustics on a standardized, easy to understand scale for existing schools.”

Schools will be recognized for two classes of achievement.  Schools that achieve general high performance in all categories without much room for improvement, by scoring at least a 70 in all categories, will achieve recognition for being high performing schools.  A second group of schools – schools that show improvement over time, with an increase of score in at least three categories – will be recognized as high improvement schools.  The latter group is designed to provide recognition for all types of schools, old and new alike. It was important to CHPS that this program targets lower performing schools, rather than simply recognizing the high performers.  “Now we have a tool that provides every school with the opportunity to become a high performance school,” said Orr.

Collecting the Necessary Data
The Operations Report Card combines three different approaches to building an assessment of the current school facility conditions.  The process begins with reporting on general facilities data to build a high-level picture of the facilities. 

Next, ORC program administrators – called school facility managers - begin system and classroom measurements, which is a critical part of the Operations Report Card process. In each of the five categories, data is reported to build the final report card.  For energy efficiency, the ORC uses the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager to access the school’s efficiency data, and the ENERGY STAR score to rate the school.  For the other four categories, sample rooms are chosen through the campus, based on HVAC and room function, approximately 25% of the classrooms in all, and assessments are made in thermal and visual comfort, acoustics, and indoor air quality. School facility managers are provided with detailed instructions and data collection forms, as well as on-demand training videos for collecting data in each of the five categories so that in-house staff can complete the program.  In some states, schools can borrow the necessary equipment, such as light meters and acoustical analyzers, from participating utilities.

The occupant surveys are an important part of both the data collection process, as well as the school buy-in process.  Steven Plaxco is the Director of Maintenance and Facilities at Yuba City Unified School District, and he spearheaded the district’s participation in the pilot school program. “The occupant survey was incredibly successful and provided us the opportunity to initiate open conversations with the classroom teachers, to listen to their concerns, and to further increase a trusting work relationship,” he said. The online tool will automatically distribute the surveys via email, and collect and analyze the results.

ORC school administrators are encouraged to alert school staff about ORC participation at a staff meeting, because a personal, face-to-face invitation further increases the response rate for the surveys. The ORC can then be programmed to automatically follow up with a group e-mail invitation.

Opportunities for Third Party Involvement
By going through the Operations Report Card process at a campus, districts will be able to identify and prioritize areas for improvement.  Green building professionals will be needed to help implement capital improvement plans based on the results of the Operations Report Card.  “Our goal is for the ORC to provide schools with the information they need to decide which improvements meet their budgets, needs, and priorities,” said Nick Semon, Technical Programs Coordinator at CHPS. “While some improvements, such as switching to higher-efficiency lighting, are straightforward opportunities that schools can immediately pursue, others are more complex.  For suggestions like upgrading an HVAC system or replacing windows, CHPS advises schools to consult with their internal design team or an external consultant to ensure that the improvement makes financial sense.  Ultimately, the ORC is an opportunity for schools to learn about opportunities for improvement that they should investigate in more detail.

Piloting the Program
The program had six pilot school participants in California over the last year, including Los Angeles USD, Santa Monica-Malibu USD, Hollister USD, Chartwell School, Yuba City USD, Tahoe-Truckee USD, and San Francisco USD.  Los Angeles USD hopes to leverage the ORC into a way for designers to learn from their existing projects. “The CHPS ORC has been a tremendous tool to verify data,” said Lucy Padilla of LAUSD. “It gives the design management team the opportunity to evaluate specific features in classrooms and workspaces to make a better environment for our students, teachers and staff.”

Steven Plaxco of Yuba City cautioned that while accurate data collection does take a significant commitment of time, the effort is worthwhile.  At his River Valley High School campus, he found that “the results were surprising. The actual lighting levels in our new school turned out to be significantly below the predicted, designed values, but our EMS system is functioning perfectly.” These insights now provide Plaxco with an informed plan for improvement. In a newspaper interview, Plaxco said, "Though we score very high as a district, we can do better."[4]

Looking to Students in the Future
Emelia Day, a graduate student in architecture at the University of Oregon, has been working with CHPS to develop a student-led module for the ORC.  The first step has been getting a handle on what parts of the ORC students can easily collect data for, as well as identifying areas “where kids could be challenged,” says Day. “For instance, we want to provide age-appropriate information on how to use the equipment. As we think about involving students, we have to consider how young is too young to use, let’s say, a light meter.” Other challenges, according to Day, are identifying curriculum integration opportunities that meet state and federal curriculum requirements, as well as looking at how to involve after-school teams so that all of the non-school-day measurements get done. “It seems like a missed opportunity when we invest in greening a school without involving the students,” says Day. “If they knew how all the systems are connected, and how these systems are connected to their own academic performance and health, they would feel a lot more invested in their own school and learning.”

Another direction for CHPS is to partner with tool lending libraries to provide tools for completing the measurements. In California, schools are already able to borrow these tools from existing lending libraries, and CHPS would like to expand that model to other states.

[1] http://apps.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=31

[2] http://www.healthyschools.org/SICK_SCHOOLS_2009.pdf

[3] http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=65, http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=84

[4] http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/school-94316-conservation-district.html